The invention relates to an electrical connector having an insulator housing, which has plug-in openings on two oppositely-lying sides of the housing, namely, on one side for inserting an electrical contact pin and on the other side for inserting the insulation-stripped end of at least one electrical conductor. On the pin side, the connector has a pin clamp contact, so that the connector can be plugged onto the contact pin of a circuit board or onto the connecting contact pin of another mating contact; and on the conductor side, the connector has a leaf-spring clamp connection with a leaf spring for each electrical conductor to be connected, which extends in the conductor plugging-in direction and oblique to the electrical conductor and, with its leaf spring end, firmly clamps the insulation-stripped end of the plugged-in electrical conductor.
Electrical conductors of this type were already described in 1976 in GB 1,528,993. There, they are presented as two-pole connectors, consisting of two one-pole connectors, which are arranged in a common block housing made of an insulator, so that the two-pole block housing connectors may be understood as a “plug and socket arrangement” in relation to two parallelly-positioned contact pins. According to GB 1,528,993, socket clamp contacts are provided for plugging the connector onto the contact pins and are to be designed in such a way that, if need be, the connector can be again pulled off the contact pins. It is also provided that the leaf-spring clamp connections present on the other side of the connector can also be again opened for the electrical conductors if need be by using a tool to press back the leaf springs of the leaf-spring clamp connections, so that the electrical conductors can be pulled out again from the connector.
Another connector of this type is known from EP 0 735 616 A2 (see therein FIGS. 18 and 19). It is referred to as an “electrical plug connector,” which can be plugged onto the soldered contact pins of a circuit board and, in consequence of a tulip-shaped spring-back socket clamp contact, can be again pulled off the contact pins. Present on the other side of the connector, in turn, is a leaf-spring clamp connection for the electrical conductor, which is also designed as a releasable leaf-spring clamp connection (as in GB 1,528,993).
Both of the aforementioned connectors assume that their pin clamp contacts and their conductor clamp connections are fabricated in their entirety from one piece of spring steel sheet, the piece of spring steel sheet being shaped on the pin side to produce a socket clamp contact and forming on the conductor side an integrated leaf-spring clamp connection for the electrical conductor. Between the two sides, the piece of spring steel sheet takes on the current-conducting function, so that, in choosing the material, attention must be paid also to a useful current-conducting capacity of the spring steel sheet, which, in turn, is reflected in the material costs of the spring steel sheet.
In regard to the design of their construction, the two aforementioned connectors are designed in such a way that the pin clamp contact, on the one hand, and the conductor clamp connection, on the other hand, are arranged at an adequate distance apart, so that the two sides do not mutually interfere with each other. The insulator housings of these known connectors are to be accordingly large in dimension.
The problem of the invention is to create a connector of the type mentioned above, which can be produced cost-effectively and the size of which can be substantially reduced, so that it can also be employed in narrow spaces both as a one-pole and as a multipole connector.